"All Learnings Has an Emotional Base" - Plato

Plato wrote, "All learning has an emotional base" approximately 2,000 years ago. Philosophers, educators, and scientists have worked ever since to either prove or disprove the significance of emotions. Sadly, for a significant portion of those two thousand years, the prevalent thought was, "Emotions should be controlled and suppressed; They prevent us from succeeding. A growing body of research over the past three decades is demonstrating the opposite.

An overview of the major contributors and the fundamental history of the study of emotional and social intelligence is provided below. This is a compilation of information from several books, websites, and articles as a guide to the development of this field of study. This is by no means an exhaustive list of everyone who has contributed to the field. Aristotle, who distinguished between various constitutive elements of occurring emotions (evaluative thought, feeling, behavioral suggestion, and bodily change), further developed the philosophical analysis of emotion after Plato introduced it. Aristotle viewed emotions in a more positive light, whereas Plato emphasized the importance of controlling and mastering them. He asserts that developing the virtues of character necessary for a happy life includes mastering the ability to feel one's feelings. The Stoics argued that all human actions can be explained in terms of the operations of a single rational soul, rejecting the idea of a separate emotional part of the soul. Emotions were seen by them as incorrect judgments. Apatheia, or emotional freedom, was the goal of Stoic therapy. The goal of therapy in later ancient schools was not to eradicate emotions but rather to control and moderate them (metriopatheia). Monastic spirituality was influenced by the ideal of apathetic divination, but the rhetoric of metriopatheia became more prevalent among early Christian theologians, including Augustine.